Tainted Love
by faultysfoux
Summary: Hatcorp/Feed the Beast fic:Dj and Smiff have always had a way of staying together. Even if it wasn't the healthiest. Rating just to be safe.


'We can't do this anymore.'

Smiff continued fiddling here, and there with an amulet he'd found conveniently from his own pocket the moment Dj had entered the room, and scoffed in a forced kind of way without looking up.

'What are you on about mate?'

He flipped around various lenses of his goggles, studying his trinket seemingly in great interest.

Dj took a deep breath. He'd spent a great deal of time, and thought on what it was he was trying to say here. It was important, and even Smiff, with all his forced nonchalant proved him that yet again just now.

He had to do this. For both of them.

'We can't do this anymore Smiff,' he steeled himself. 'I won't.'

Smiff finally turned to look him in the eye, a clockwork turn, then back to his task with barely a pause, but Dj had seen a crack - a tiny flash of real emotion before his back was in the way, and a chuckle muddied it all. He felt nausea roll through him.

'What are you talking about? What won't you do?' Smiff repeated with a painful, falsely confused smile.

'I won't hurt you again. I refuse.' And just like that the crack became a fissure that just barely held itself together over harsh emotions always just below the surface. Smiff's movements were short and sharp, violent if not in stature, before they quickly stilled entirely. No further progression in foe magical study, no longer simply looking at something else. Dj couldn't find any air left to breath in. 'That means that this has to end,' he blinked.

Smiff faced him then, all at once toys and tools gone before they could disappear, and they stood a foot apart, Dj's hand held in an iron clad grip.

'Everything's fine Dj. Of course you won't hurt me. Nothing has to change. Everything's fine.'

Dj pulled his hand free in an instant to fall back against the wall, and let himself slide lightly to the floor. He blinked slowly, feeling a burn behind his eyes flare as he watched Smiff's fingers slip loosely back to his side. His voice sounded so brittly sure, and normal.

Dj knew that later he would be violently ill once he got away from this suddenly horrifically cold and stifling environment, once he could look back on all this without his friends eyes looking down on him with just a thin veneer of innocent expectancy, a cool facade over the fear, and the pain, and the terrifyingly repressed anger. Twists in his stomach accompany his suddenly not-so-calm retort.

'Everything! is not fine Smiff. I'm sorry, but I'm ending this,' he near shouted.

His steady stare on the man before him was the only format by which Dj had some comprehension of how everything sharply changed between them there and then in that unimportant surrounding. He saw through the veneer. Just for a moment.

In the next Smiff glared just from his left, and had Dj's hand held in a tight grip once again; he seemed to bounce closer, apparently desperate to move beyond their appearance of friendship held thinly before, and warm the others side.

'You love me Dj,' he said it like an accusation. Dj briefly closed his eyes against their background heat, and the bright blue gaze harsh on his own, and swallowed around a constricted throat. It didn't help.

'I- I do Smiff.'

'And I love you. You love me, and I love you. That's all that matters, you don't have to-'

'I do have to! I love you Smiff. And you're right. That is all that matters, which is exactly why I really do have to. I won't hurt you again!'

Smiff's voice had taken on a harder tone, but it didn't fool Dj. Everything he could hear besides it made his breathing speed up along with his words, giving him a slightly hysterical edge.

His hand was released only for Smiff to shift further around his front again to take hold of his shoulders. It seemed to just bring them even closer.

'Why do you keep saying that? Why would you hurt me Dj?' an audible crack occurred this time. 'You wouldn't do that.' He only sounded a little bit annoyed still.

'But I would, and I- I will. I know I won't want to, but if I get mad, or we get into a fight-' Dj had trouble keeping eye contact

'Well, I just won't make you mad then!'

Everything in the monstrous marble art piece around them; each piece of noisy machination, the hiss of steam and molten metal, every shift in elemental magic, stopped. As a drop of moisture tripped from Almiffy's eye to land innocuously enough on Dj's pant covered knee, dark cloth hiding its existence almost instantaneously.

'I'm sorry alright,' Smiff continued, now missing the expression of the man before him by keeping his gaze roving elsewhere. 'For everything that's happened. I promise I won't upset you again. Just please Dj- please- I'm sorry...'

Dj's initial plan of no physical interactions was thrown swiftly out the window in that instant. Heart nothing but a rock scraping against lungs with every breath, and definitely lodged further up his throat then it should, he reached out numb fingers to take Smiff's face in both hands.

'It wasn't your fault Smiffy. None of it,' he pulled the other forward against his cheek, and finally Dj closed his eyes for longer than a moment to let his own tears fall too. 'None of it was ever your fault,' he could hear his own desperation leak into his assurances.

He was desperate by this point. So desperate, and wanting to do the right thing, chest worn out, eyes soar, and head aching, the stress built up from the moment he woke up so early that morning in a bed that wasn't his - or Smiff's - wearing out his resolve before he even talked to Trottimus, tired of seeing the pain he was causing... that he forgot who he was dealing with.

Smiff pulled away slightly, but kept close to Dj, practically sitting in his lap, and clinging to either shoulder.

'If it's not my fault then why are you doing this to me hmm? I thought you said you loved me,' Smiff questioned, tone more normal, and light, and hard again.

Dj stuttered in response, brows furrowed.

'Of course I do Smiffy. You have to believe me I do love you. That's why I don't want to see you hurt.'

As Smiff spoke, their positions reversed, it was Smiff who held Dj's pained and tearful face in two tender hands then, whilst he in turn clung to Smiff's suit lapels. He couldn't stop himself.

'But you are hurting me. You said that you wouldn't, but you are. You're supposed to be in love with me Dj,' he spoke wryly again, flippant, and foe critically.

Still, he pulled back a touch further, and Dj couldn't let him move away. His plans for this conversation a distant speech card that had been completely replaced by the others words, Smiff sounded accusing again, in a gentle way, and Dj just wanted to make everything right.

'You're supposed to want to be with me forever.'

'Please Smiff. This is... Important. I have to stop all of this. I'm sorry. Please-'

Smiff kissed him then, just a quick three second closed mouth kiss, but by the end the pair were closer than ever, with more of Smiff draped over Dj than ever before. He gently brushed away Dj's tears, even as he attempted to continue, in a pitifully ruined way, to voice his reasonings, telling the other why they should stop even though they didn't. He kissed Dj again, again, and again, smoothing hands up and down his arms, and waist, through his hair, and down to hands, offering words of acquiescence, pulling him up, and along, out of the brilliant empty space - making sure not to let Dj get anything more than two, or three whispered words in edgewise.

'You don't have to worry mate. Just stay with me, all right.'

Trottimus had seen the change in conversation. He had heard the moment Smiff had realised his opportunity for control, and had taken it. He'd seen Dj's complete failure to correct the situation. He'd shaken his head, sighed, and let the rest of it play out without his presence, only sticking around by the lifts in a supportive promise to his friend in the first place.

Really, they deserved each other.

It was so odd for the walrus to feel the way he did about his friends; the slightly nauseated feeling he got when he observed them going through their kind-of couple activities was different now. He felt pity. In the end they were both gits, cheating, manipulative gits that seemed to - Trottimus was hesitant to call it love. He had seen love. He was in love, and he could see how sappily cute, and admittedly for-the-most-part happy the two strange men were together. But he also saw the terrible things they would do for that happiness.

As he carefully avoided going within a mile of the 'Wizard's' tower for the rest of the evening, he settled for a love tainted, and twisted in a way that might only work for - of course - the only two people he called best mates.


End file.
